


white rose, red petals

by Anonymous



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Endgame Victor Nikiforov/Yuri Plisetsky, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Major Character Injury, POV Multiple, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 06:59:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11731920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When Yuri breaks, there is only one person who can put him back together again.(Victor-coaches-Yuri, set one year after Season 1)





	white rose, red petals

**Author's Note:**

> pov changes at the //

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> featured song: _snakes and lions_ by melpo mene

Yuri Plisetsky skates like he has the wind locked between the blades of his skates. 

 

Victor was terrified of him when he first met the boy as a young and ambitious teenager. He didn't introduce himself when they first met, just stared at Victor with cold eyes and spat out a cold, "I will destroy you, Nikiforov." before turning on his heel and heading to the locker rooms.

 

Victor, at the time, pressed a nervous smile onto his lips to mask the fear churning a knot in his stomach. 

 

It was exactly people like Yuri Plisetsky that were able to claw and drag their way to the very top. People like Yuri Plisetsky looked at people like Victor as if they were nothing more than an obstacle, a small thing to overcome for victory.

 

In Yuri's eyes, he was nothing but a challenge.

 

To an eighteen-year-old Victor Nikiforov who had nothing to live for but the medals around his neck and the ice under his blades, the idea of being overcome was terrifying.

 

So he made it his goal to become _better_ , to become more than just a stone in Yuri's path. He made himself a boulder- no, a mountain- and for the most part, it worked. For eight years, he was able to stay just a step ahead of the fiery teenager, was able to keep his tentative place on the ice.

 

With Yuri, it was a constant game of cat and mouse. Yuri would come within inches of Victor's junior records only work himself to the bone and miss a crucial jump, landing him less than a point behind Victor's score. 

But the threat was there, and when Yuri finally broke his junior world record Victor trained harder than he ever had before, bending his bones into shape so he could turn the doubles into triples and the triples into quads, buying himself time while Yuri struggled tooth and claw to catch up. 

 

But that was the one thing Yuri had that Victor didn't: time.

 

_Time_ had a death grip around Victor's throat, and it only grew tighter with every painful bend of his spine, every landing that made his bones ache something dangerous.

 

It was only a matter of time until time grew tired of waiting for Victor Nikiforov and playing his stupid games. It was only a matter of time until time kicked the precarious bucket right out from under his broken feet.

 

That was, until he met Katsuki Yuuri.

 

**//**

 

"That's the fifth cellphone you've broken this season," Otabek says, his feet propped up on the coffee table even though Yuri's pretty sure he's told him to get them the fuck off at least a million times now. "What did _Figure Skating's Number One Cutest Couple_ do this time?"

 

"I don't know why they make those stupid lists," Yuri says, ignoring the question as he moves into the kitchen and digs through the empty fridge. "It's not like there's an astounding number of couples in the sport. Most of the people doing pairs are siblings nowadays - guess couples aren't too fond of slicing each other's face off for money anymore."

 

Otabek hums, changing the channel on the TV to the news. The weatherman was rattling on about another "pleasantly frigid day" and Yuri wants to puke at the forced optimism. 

 

"Are you going to answer the question?"

 

Yuri doesn't respond, grabbing the expired orange juice and sniffing it. It smells good enough, so he pulls it out and makes himself a glass. Otabek doesn't say anything until Yuri flops down on the couch beside him and graciously kicks his feet off of the coffee table.

 

"' _ Katsuki and Nikiforov Planning to Wed On the Day Katsuki Skated "Stay Close to Me" Tribute, April 10 _ ," Yuri finally bites out, rolling his eyes so hard that it gives him a migraine. He pulls his legs up to his chest, tapping his fingers angrily on the glass. "I just - why are they so disgustingly up-front about everything? It's like they're mocking everyone who doesn't have the time for cutesy paparazzi relationships and flowery wedding plans."

 

Otabek doesn't say anything, but Yuri can practically feel the judgement rolling off of him in silent waves.

 

"Are you psychoanalyzing me again?" Yuri slants his eyes at his friend as he takes a sip of the suspiciously too-sour juice.

 

"Are you jealous of them?"

 

Yuri chokes, barely refraining from spluttering orange juice all over his clothes. 

 

"Don't be dramatic." Otabek watches him. "I've seen they way you watch them. You want what they have."

 

"What they have?" Yuri spits the words out. "What, a flock of rabid fans and absolutely no privacy? I'm pretty sure I've got that covered, Beka."

 

"No," Otabek says, shaking his head. "A relationship. Freedom off the ice. Happiness that you don't have to find out there on the ice on your own. Just... living a life that's your own instead of one that's dictated by how many points you score for your next quad."

 

"I have everything I want." Yuri turns his head, looks out the massive glass window. "I'm rich. I'm famous. I'm talented. I'm basically a celebrity, y'know."

 

"Oh, I know." Otabek laughs a little, a rare sound. "You have everything any teenager would want, right? Money, fame, thousands of fans. You're a god."

 

Yuri can hear the patronizing tone to his voice and he doesn't appreciate it. "Fuck off."

 

"I'm just saying." Yuri glances at Otabek to see him raising a shoulder indifferently. "You may be all those things, but you're a teenager too. Your only friend is me, and I live and skate in an entirely different country."

 

"That's a lie." Yuri looks away again, frowning. "I have friends. Mila's my friend."

 

"You haven't spoken to Mila since last year," Otabek points out. "You hate her."

 

"I don't need friends." It feels petulant, small, coming from him. Yuri hates that. "I don't need friends. I have everything I need already."

 

Otabek doesn't say anything, just puts his damned feet back up on the coffee table and turns the volume up until the sound of the weatherman drowns out the constant mantra of _I don't need friends_ bouncing around Yuri's head.

 

He doesn't need anyone. He has himself.

 

And a world record over Victor Nikiforov's head.

 

Which is _by far_ more important than friends.

 

**//**

 

Russia is a different color when Victor visits it this time. Brighter, almost blindingly so.

 

He tells himself it's because he brought Yuuri with him, but he knows better. He knows it's because the last time he was here, he was hanging on by the last threads his body was able to give him. He knows it's because he's no longer staring down failure and fear in the face every time he leaves the skating rink with burning muscles and bleeding heels.

 

Even so, he tells Yuuri that it's because he's there with him, and the smile that blooms on his chapped lips almost makes it worth it.

 

"You're so sappy," Yuuri tells him, sliding his cold hand into Victor's gloved one and linking their fingers. "Everything you say sounds like it comes out of some kind of twisted love poem."

 

"I could write you a book filled with poems and none of them could properly express my love for you,  _ моя драгоценность _ ," Victor says, smiling when Yuuri rolls his eyes and tightens their hands.

 

He hates the way he can see a pencil scribbling points onto a page behind his eyelids, like his relationship with Yuuri is being judged on a scoring sheet just like his skating. Perhaps it's just remnants of a life spent clawing for every last decimal, every last fraction.

 

He'll get over it.

 

"Victor," Yuuri says after a moment of walking in silence, his brows furrowing. "Isn't your apartment back there?"

 

Deduction. 

 

"Don't worry," Victor says, mostly speaking to himself. "I just figured we would stop by and say hi to Yurio. It's been so long."

 

"Oh." Yuuri smiles. "That's a good idea. I'm sure he'll be happy to see us."

 

It's a joke, and Victor laughs along with it. Still, he doesn't miss the way Yuuri's smile tightens at the corner. He's probably going to get an earful later for not mentioning it beforehand.

 

He doesn't know why he didn't, really. He kind of feels ashamed that they're going to spend their first hours in Russia with Yuri Plisetsky instead of together, alone, but he can't help it.

 

He needs to see Yuri's face. Needs to see the gloating come from somebody else other than the ghost of himself he left behind.

 

Because even though he managed to make a career out of something he'd never dreamed out, it had only gotten silver. And Yuri had won gold. Broken his record, finally.

 

Even though it was praised as a huge victory, Victor felt like he'd suffered one of the worst losses in his life.

 

"Get the fuck out of my house."

 

It's a warm welcome, by most standards of one Yuri Plisetsky, and Victor's willing to take it for now. Yuuri, on the other hand, seems nervous, wringing his hands together and fidgeting in the doorway.

 

"I missed you too, Yurio." Victor smiles, and it isn't forced. He kind of misses that feeling.

 

He moves past Yuri, taking Yuuri with him and immediately making himself at home on the arm chair as usual. It isn't until Yuuri quietly settles on the couch that he realizes he should have sat there to begin with instead of isolating Yuuri.

 

A flubbed jump. Point deduction.

 

_ Stop it, Victor. _

 

"Otabek is here," Yuri says, padding into the kitchen and messing with the cabinets. "Don't call me that God-forsaken name."

 

He really should stop calling Yuri that, but it's too risky with Yuuri sitting right there.

 

"We're sorry for interrupting," Yuuri says, ever polite. "We just got back, and we wanted to see how you've been. Congratulations on placing at Worlds, by the way."

 

"The only thing you're interrupting is Otabek bumming off of me to visit Mila and clogging up my shower. Also, it was a silver," Yuri dismisses, like winning bronze at his first Senior World Championships is a disappointment. "And you congratulated me when it happened."

 

"Oh. Sorry."

 

It's been a total of five minutes and Yuuri's already apologized twice. This isn't going well.

 

After a few minutes of chatter about wedding plans and another extended (and denied) invitation to Yurio to attend, Otabek steps into the living room wearing only a pair of gym shorts and a towel around his neck.

 

Yuuri is flustered; Victor just grins knowingly.

 

"To visit Mila?" he echoes, raising a brow.

 

Yuri ignores Victor in favor of throwing a dish rag, which smacks Otabek flat in the chest yet doesn't even make him flinch. Victor realizes that Yuri is cooking something - probably piroshkis.

 

"I told you to stop waltzing around buckass naked," Yuri says, turning back the kitchen with a bit of red spotting his face. "Now you've freaked out the stupid  _ katsudon _ ."

 

"You never mentioned guests," Otabek retorts, though it's a friendly banter, that much Victor can tell. "I'm not naked. That was once, and - "

 

"Just go put a fucking shirt on, God." 

 

Yuri throws another dish rag and eventually Otabek ambles back into Yuri's room, rolling his eyes just like Yuri would. It's funny how similar they're becoming - Otabek has gotten sassy, and Yuri has mellowed out a little.

 

"So Otabek is staying in your room?" Victor breaks the silence with a knowing grin that earns a scathing glare from around the corner of the kitchen.

 

"It's a fucking technicality, Nikiforov. Get over yourself."

 

When Otabek comes back out wearing a shirt with cat fur on it that runs a bit small on him and would have been just big enough to be comfy on Yuri, though, Victor starts to think it's more than just a "technicality."

 

**//**

 

“Be careful with Otabek.”

 

Yuri wants to throw himself off of his balcony. Take a nap in the oven. Do anything except be right here talking to Victor in the middle of his kitchen about boys, specifically the one barely twenty feet away making small talk with Yuuri.

 

“I don’t need your attempts at shitty parenting,” Yuri spits at him, crossing his arms over his chest and feeling rather childish in spite of his words. “Just because I’m lacking in that department doesn’t mean you have to compensate it to satiate your twisted morals, or something.”

 

“I’m not compensating for anything. I just want you to make sure you’re happy where you are.” Victor’s brow furrows, like he’s searching for words. “You know that the chances of you two being able to hang out are slim with - “

 

“I’m well fucking aware of how long-distance relationships work, old man.” Yuri bites his tongue and adds hastily, “Which this isn’t. What’s going on with Otabek is just… it’s casual. Whatever. It’s whatever.”

 

“Whatever,” Victor echoes.

 

Yuri stares at him hard until Victor relents, leaning against the island and crossing his arms to mimic Yuri’s behavior. It feels so weird to have Victor in his kitchen after more than a year of it without him - he hates the way it feels  _ right _ to have him here.

 

_ God fucking damn it, not this again. _ Yuri clenches his fists at his sides and turns to the oven to check on the piroshkis. 

 

He can practically feel Victor’s eyes burning into his back. He can practically hear the question burning on the man’s lips, begging to be spoken but held back in fear of Yuri snapping at him.

 

“For fuck’s sake, spit it out already,” Yuri says, closing the oven and catching Victor mid-crisis. “I’m not going to claw your eyes out or anything.”

 

“Surely not,” Victor agrees with a satirical grin that somehow annoys Yuri further. He’s hiding something, he always is, Yuri can tell by the way he’s placed this fake charming attitude on his face.

 

It’s disgusting to watch Victor get like this after the way they’d been before - before  _ Yuuri _ . Now he was just like he was as a fucking teenager, closed off and annoying and bratty and gross. After just two small steps forward, Victor had taken a million more backwards in just a year.

 

“What’s screwing with you?” Yuri slips easily into interrogation mode, the same as he did when they first started living together and he had to deal with Victor’s elusive moods and secretiveness. “Are you still jacked up over me and Otabek? Because it’s just a  _ thing _ , like I said, so don’t let your petty self-sacrificing morals work your brain too hard - “

 

“It’s Yuuri,” Victor interrupts, the words practically spat out, and he immediately looks like he wants to stuff them right back down his throat. “I mean, it’s me. About Yuuri.”

 

There it is. All it took was a little bit of pushing and Victor had returned to himself instead of some teenager who repressed all their feelings and kept their problems from everyone else.

 

“Oh, God,” Yuri says, hopping up onto the counter and crossing his legs. “What did you say to him?”

 

“I - I didn’t say anything to him. I think that’s the problem.” Victor runs a hand through his hair, casting a glance at the two in the living room talking quietly. “I’m doing everything wrong.”

 

Yuri pauses before his eyes narrow and he leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees. Victor looks like a kicked puppy, uncertain of whether it should trail behind its master or run with its tail between its legs.

 

“You’re treating it like a routine, aren’t you.” Yuri doesn't hide the sneer in his voice, because he already knows the answer. "You treat everything like somebody's standing behind you, calling out points and deductions. Yuuri doesn't get that."

 

It isn’t a question, but Victor seems to fumble for an answer anyways. That’s enough proof for Yuri, and he can’t really say he’s surprised. 

 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Victor eventually gets out, sounding tired and pathetic and utterly unlike himself. “I thought this was what I wanted. What I needed.”

 

“A relationship?” 

 

Yuri wants to laugh at the similarity this conversation holds to the one he had with Otabek earlier.

 

“No, not that.” Victor shakes his head, bites his lip as he always does when he’s thinking hard. After a moment, he leans back and stares at the ceiling as if it’s going to give him the answers he wants.

 

“Then what, oh-so-mysterious-and-complex?”

 

It’s supposed to sound mean, but it comes out a little bit too soft for Yuri’s liking. He bites his tongue.

 

“I thought Yuuri could give me a life,” Victor finally says, closing his eyes. “A purpose.”

 

Yuri laughs then, a short and harsh sound that makes Victor flinch and look back at him with a rather injured expression. Yuri doesn’t care, because he deserves it for thinking something so utterly  _ stupid _ in the first place, even more so for clinging to it like a child.

 

“The only life we have is the one we carve for ourselves out there in front of thousands of people,” Yuri says. “You of all people should know that, Victor Nikiforov.”

 

And judging by the way Victor’s expression hardens, Yuri knows that he does.

 

He just doesn’t want to accept it.

 

**//**

 

Victor and Yuuri don’t get married that Spring. 

 

When asked in an interview, Victor tells them they want to focus on next season’s preparations so that they can perform at their best. He acts as if it’s going to be their final season just to stir up a different focus than the changed date, and to direct attention towards their programs rather than their personal lives.

 

Things are starting to fall apart. It’s like watching the leaves fall from a tree - they’re already long dead, and he’s helpless but to watch as they shrivel and collapse, one by one, until the branches are barren and hollow.

 

Victor finds himself spending more time alone than with Yuuri, which is silly since they live together. He stops  _ trying _ , even though he knows he should be.

 

He spends more nights out alone at the bar watching the TV talk about his program than he does at home talking with Yuuri about it.

 

He still coaches Yuuri - it’s his job, after all. And he doesn’t fall short on that aspect, constantly pushing him to be better, to skate until he breaks, but he can tell he’s lost Yuuri on some points.

 

Like when he tells Yuuri that he should bend himself until he just nearly breaks and Yuuri stares at him blankly before shaking his head and doing the routine again, exactly the same as he had before.

 

It’s infuriating, it’s exhausting, and it doesn’t even scratch the surface on their ever-growing mountain of problems.

 

If a relationship was a routine, he’d be in the negatives at this point. A trillion flubbed jumps and messy step sequences all compiling into a disastrous routine that's falling apart at the seams.

 

It doesn’t reach a climax, either. Instead he finds himself at a standpoint with Yuuri for nearly a year following the night they came to Russia - constantly toeing the edge of falling apart but never quite reaching it. Checkmate.

 

Victor knows why - because every time they get close to _something_ confrontational, he runs. Like a frightened child, he hides from whatever’s waiting for him until it grows tired and leaves.

 

He’s a coward. And it doesn't take a miserably failing relationship to realize that. He's known that for a while.

 

He’d invested everything in Yuuri - his hopes, his wants, his life, his  _ love _ , and Yuuri crumbled under the pressure. Victor let him reach that point. He forced all these ideals on somebody who couldn’t shoulder them.

 

Eventually Yuuri stops using the word ‘we’, and it isn’t until then that Victor realizes he never used it in the first place.

 

Victor is so used to manipulating himself for the purpose of his routine, to shaping himself into this perfect idea to fit the wants of the audience, that he’s stunned when Yuuri isn’t willing to do the same for him.

 

Victor tries to change, tries to make himself a lovable person, but Yuuri sees right through it. He’s too perceptive to not notice, but too kind to accept it. 

 

And when he finds Yuuri crying alone in their bedroom after coming home far too late one night from practice, he doesn’t stay. Instead he runs away like a coward and drinks half of Russia until the world blurs into weird, pretty shapes and his stomach burns with angry fireflies.

 

When he’s finally forced out by an exhausted bartender, he doesn’t go home; instead he knocks down Yuri’s door until the pissed off skater begrudgingly lets him in, muttering about  _ homeless old men _ and a  _ pathetic heap of a person _ .

 

He guesses he falls asleep on Yuri’s couch, because he wakes up there to Yuri banging around in the kitchen almost two hours later to make himself his usual morning protein shake.

It reminds him of their routine before he left to Japan, where they got up at four and went running by five. It's so familiar he wants to curl up and let the sofa swallow him whole so that he doesn't have to get up and re-enter the new world he's made for himself with endless nights and cold touches.

 

Even so, he knows better. This isn't his home anymore. It isn't his world.

 

He's exiled himself to a paradise he never should have created.

 

For all of Yuri’s complaining the night before, there’s still an afghan thrown over him a little  _ too _ carelessly and a cup of water and white pills next to it on the coffee table.

 

He downs the water and pills quickly. It does little to help the way his head throbs and aches and the room spins.

 

“Practice is in two hours,” Yuri says, rounding the corner and dropping a plate of eggs in front of him. “If you puke in the shower, you’re bleaching it on your hands and knees before we leave. I'm going for a run. Don’t make me late.”

 

Victor can’t say he’s surprised, but he can’t say he’s overly thankful in the moment either.

 

He ends up bleaching Yuri’s shower twice that morning.

 

**//**

 

“Are you nervous?”

 

Yuri swears to himself that the next time somebody asks him that, he’s going to use his skate blades for recreational murder. This time it’s coming from Victor, and he really expected better from somebody like him.

 

“I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, want one?” Yuri slants his eyes at Victor, sarcasm dripping from his tone. “Why are  _ you _ asking  _ me _ that, first-Grand-Prix-in-two-years? Or even better, your anxiety-ridden fiancee who was crying his eyes out five minutes ago?”

 

“Because you’ve got a lot riding on this,” Victor says. “You won last year’s Grand Prix because I wasn’t there - “

 

“Don’t fucking start with that, Nikiforov.” Yuri bends town to retie his skates for the fifth time, avoiding eye contact. “I’m going to beat your world record again this time, the only difference is that now you’re going to be watching me from the Kiss & Cry.”

 

Yuri wants to believe that. He does.

 

His fingers shake a little and he clenches them tighter around the laces, pulls harder to form the knot. He can’t let himself lose his grip, not now that the only person holding him back has quad flipped right back into the competition pool.

 

He’s furious with Victor. Victor, who can skate at twenty-nine years old and make it look like a fucking road trip even when Yuri  _ knows _ his bones are ripping themselves apart. Victor, who took a year off of skating and can still land his signature move than Yuri or Yuuri ever could. Victor, who’s been practicing nearly as much as Yuri has and is still reaping the benefits rather than the losses.

 

Victor, who drank himself unconscious the night before a qualifying competition and still won gold. Victor, the renowned god of figure skating. 

 

Victor, who everyone believes will be throwing Yuri one step down the podium tonight. Putting him back in his rightful place, like he overstepped himself before.

Like he doesn't deserve to have the gold medal tied around his throat like a show cat's collar.

 

He grits his teeth and pulls his laces once more before standing up and fixing Victor with a glare. 

 

“I can’t wait to look down on you from the top of the podium.”

 

Victor doesn’t break face, just smiles in the way that he does for reporters and fans and Katsuki Yuuri.

 

“Neither can I.”

 

God, he hates that smile.

 

**//**

 

Victor breaks his broken world record, and he thinks he should be proud of himself for it. And he is, at first, until he slides out of the Kiss & Cry and catches the way Yuuri is staring at him like a total stranger and thinks, immediately, _ deduction. _

 

He wants to scratch at his brain until he gets rid of whatever part of it is dead-set on turning his relationship into a skating routine, but before he has time to Yuuri is moving to take his place on the ice and he’s forced to quiet his brain.

 

He wishes that he could say Yuuri’s program blew him away, but instead it left him craving more. There's something missing that reaches out and pulls at his throat but he can't name it, and he feels like because of that he's failed Yuuri. As his coach, he's supposed to be able to latch onto that pull and grab it by the neck and give it a name, and instead he just sits there uselessly until the routine ends.

 

Yuuri looks like he's reached for the stars, his fingers splayed over his chest on one hand while the other arches over his head and his golden ring glints off of the rink lights mockingly. There's a breath of silence where he can see all of Yuuri's fears stretched out on the rink in front of him: vulnerable and exposed and afraid. Like a newborn lamb stumbling into the jaws of a lion and waiting for them to snap shut around his throat.

 

The lamb is ever willing to be consumed by the lion. It's a sacrifice a figure skater makes every day, bearing his heart and skull in exchange for nothing but pain and a prolonged fall.

 

The moment passes as Victor cups his hands around his mouth and screams Yuuri's name at the top of his lungs. It's a cry - not a war cry, but a cry for attention. A desperate way of reaching out and begging for forgiveness.

His voice is drowned out by the crowd before it even gets past his throat.

 

Yuuri doesn’t even glance at him. He's too busy staring at the scoreboard.

 

It's lower than Victor’s. By nearly a point.

 

Yuuri looks like he just had the wind ripped out of his lungs at the score on the screen, like he's been gutted and left out to rot, even though it’s his own personal best.

 

_ Your best is not good enough _ , Victor remembers telling him.

 

What poisonous words.

 

Victor goes to comfort him as he exits the Kiss & Cry, to bite down on his pride and offer something,  _ anything _ to Yuuri, who looks like he's walking a thin line to his own death as he makes his way to the doors. Victor grabs him by the wrist moments before he gets there, tightens his grip until Yuuri looks him in the eyes.

 

He finds himself face to face with the same Katsuki Yuuri he encountered years before at the airport - completely closed off, eyes blank, his brain shut down to silence the chaos brewing inside of it.

 

Victor’s heart clenches because of all the sides of Yuuri he’s seen, he has no idea how to deal with this one, and it has everything to do with the fact that it’s no different from what he does.

 

_I did this._

 

He spends too long waiting, staring, and the glimmer of hope that flashes in Yuuri’s eyes goes out like a snuffed flame. 

 

“I have to go,” Yuuri says, tugging his wrist back. “Victor.”

 

Victor’s grip loosens on instinct (so eager to let go, to give in, to give _up_ ) before he fixes himself and tightens it, pulls Yuuri towards him and wraps an arm around his shoulders. Yuuri is stiff beneath him, wired up like a snake about the strike, a thousand knots of tension rippling in his muscles.

 

Yuuri is unyielding, unwilling to let himself relax like he used to when Victor embraces him, and Victor can’t help but feel like he’s lost something from Yuuri he won’t be able to get back.

 

It's like Yuuri's shoved a sword through his chest. Even though he knows he's the one who put the sword in his hands in the first place.

 

“Are you okay?” Victor pulls back a little, but he keeps one hand on Yuuri’s shoulder and the other tight around his wrist, caging him in without realizing it. “You were amazing out there. The audience loved every second of it.”

 

Yuuri stares at him before shaking his head a bit, letting out a breath. He said the wrong thing again. Before Victor can stuff a fist down his throat and choke himself to death, Yuuri is pulling his wrist out of Victor’s grasp and moving out from under his touch.

 

“I know  _ they _ did, Victor,” he says, meeting his eyes for the first time in what feels like too long, “but you didn’t.”

 

Victor chokes on his words the one time he needs them the most.

 

“What?” is what comes out.

 

_ I _   _did_ , is what he wants to say, but he's so far beyond lying to Katsuki Yuuri, because he knows he can't get away with it.

 

“That performance?” Yuuri gestures to the rink, where they’ve begun preparing for the second round of skaters. “That wasn’t for the audience, or for the points, or anything remotely like that. Usually I obsess over that, but not this time. I took a chance this time, put all my effort into something I was afraid to lose, only to realize I had already lost it.”

 

Victor swallows hard, his hands trembling at his side. He desperately wants to hold onto something, to ground himself, to keep himself from drifting off into the horrid personality he’d created for himself years ago every time he felt the cold slap of his mother’s hand on his cheek.

 

He doesn’t want to be that Victor, who was so scared of himself and of other people that he locked himself up and let whatever remained fester until he was empty and hollow and  _ cruel _ . He doesn’t want to be a child whose mother can’t bear to love him because he’s a mindless robot. Not again.

 

He doesn't want to put himself through that, and most importantly he doesn't want to put  _Yuuri_ through that.

 

“Do you know what I was skating for?” Yuuri’s voice is too sharp, too familiar to the one that he heard through the floorboards. It rakes harsh nails down Victor’s throat and silences the words that he tries to push out.

 

Instead, he just shakes his head mutely and watches as hurt flashes across Yuuri’s face because he  _ does _ know, damn it, he  _ knows _ he just can’t find the fucking words to say - 

 

“I was skating for  _ you _ .”

 

The words are colder than the ice that still clings to the silver blades on Yuuri’s skates, but unlike them these words don’t melt away, they just get colder as the silence stretches between them until it’s unbearable and Yuuri is backing away from him, the distance a rubber band that stretches until it creaks but never snaps.

 

“I’ve spent our entire relationship thinking I should do better only to realize that I should  _ be _ better,” Yuuri says, and Victor can hear the rubber band finally tearing in slow motion. “But I doubt that would have been enough for you, Victor.”

 

_ Snap _ .

 

The way Yuuri says his name, it sounds like a curse, and Victor deserves it, but it hurts anyways.

 

It feels like he’s watching everything he worked so hard to achieve crash and burn right in front of his eyes as he’s chained to it. Except instead of feeling the burn of the flame he’s stuck with it trapped in his chest with no means of escape.

 

He's drowning in fire. It's a beautiful thing to imagine, but in person, he would rather shatter every bone in his body than feel it. Than watch the one person who gave him purpose abandon because he wasn't enough.

 

Isn't enough.

 

Won't ever be enough.

 

By the time the world comes back into focus, Yuuri is already gone, and the announcer is announcing the next skater as enthusiastic cheers rip through the audience. He doesn’t have to turn to know who’s moving onto the rink, a barren warzone primed for another battle.

 

“Taking the ice now is the future of Russia’s figure skating team, the shining paragon of his generation, the rising prodigy with his eyes set on the throne Victor Nikiforov currently sits upon - ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, _Yuri Plisetsky_!”

 

The roar of the crowd does little to drown out the cacophony in Victor’s head, but he still turns around and watches as his throne is ripped out under his feet anyways.

 

It is only fitting for the fall of a king to be accompanied by the rising of a god. He might as well watch it so that he can fall with at least a shred of dignity left between his fingers.

 

Somewhere off the ice, Yuuri is alone with only the hollow sound of his own heart and a bathroom stall as a refuge. 

 

And yet Victor stays, loyal to the ice that shaped him, and if that isn't telling, he doesn't know what is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think. updates (tentatively) every monday


End file.
